Survival Hunter Artifact Weapon: Talonclaw – Legion 7.3.5

This section of the Survival Hunter guide explains the best possible choices for the Netherlight Crucible, important traits and relic bonuses, and how to progress through your artifact weapon Talonclaw. This guide was written by Delirium from the Thrill of the Wild and the Hunting Party Podcast. Updated for the latest patch.

Active Ability

Equipping Talonclaw grants you the ability Furia dell'Aquila, which quickly strikes all enemies in front of you. Furia della Mangusta also increases the damage they take from this ability.

Netherlight Crucible

The Netherlight Crucible is a new system added in Patch 7.3. The Crucible allows you further empower your Survival Hunter Artifact Weapon, by specializing and increasing the power from your relics. With it, each relic receives a small talent tree that you can select new traits from, depending how many traits your weapon have. Do not worry, however, because with the changes to Artifact Knowledge, unlocking the full power of the Crucible won't take long. Learn everything about this new system in our Netherlight Crucible Guide. With the opening of Antorus, il Trono Infuocato, it is now possible to obtain Fregio della Grande Armata, which increases the potency of your Tier 2 Crucible traits by 50%. It might be a really strong legendary if you are lucky with Netherlight Crucible rolls! Data courtesy of HeroDamage.

Relics

Item level, and consequently Weapon Damage, is definitely the most important aspect of relics for SV hunters. If you have the choice between relics with similar ilvls, the following traits provide the greatest boosts to DPS:

"BiS Relics"Because ilvl is the most important aspect of relics for SV, and the later bosses drop the highest ilvl gear, you'll generally be replacing your Survival Hunter Artifact relics as you work your way through Nighthold, rather than getting one best Relic and holding on to it. Of course, if you get lucky with a Warforged or Titanforged piece, that might not be the case. SV hunters have two relics possible from Guldan, which drops the highest ilvl gear available from raiding; however, those pieces obviously won't be available while you're working on kill Guldan, so you should simply choose the highest ilvl relics available to you to aid with progression. Information based on HeroDamage.

Morso dell'Aquila is a moderately high ticking damage over time effect that's applied by Arpione, limited to one target. You can keep this debuff up on a single target for an indefinite duration.

Echi di Ohn'ara - While this is a fairly cool trait (Survival Hunters should be familiar with the eagle Ohn'ara from questing), the damage component of this trait is a bit lacking. Unfortunately, at its current tuning, Echi di Ohn'ara is not powerful enough to change our rotation, and does not bring up the average damage of Assalto Fiancheggiato enough to boost the value of Istinti Animali.

Armonia degli Spezzalegione - A significant Agility buff that should occur on average every 44 seconds. At rank 1, this provides 2000 agility for 10 seconds, and gains an additional 200 agility per rank, up to a purposefully unobtainable 11800 agility at rank 50/50.

Condizioni di Ingaggio - Resets Arpione's long 20-second cooldown whenever you kill an enemy. Don't listen to anyone who says not to get this trait until close to last. It's amazing for leveling, good for dungeons, and even though it isn't a direct damage increase, it will help you be one of the first melee to switch to priority adds in raids, and one of the first to get back on the boss after that add dies, making you a much more valuable melee raider.

Forza Esplosiva - This trait further increases Explosive Traps' already high damage. Great for both single- and multi-target situations. Increased to 4 ranks when empowered.

Rapace - A small amount of self-healing, this is only useful for topping yourself off while leveling. Increased to 4 ranks when empowered.

Fauci della Mangusta - Increases the damage of Mongoose Bite crits by 20%. This is a fairly good damage trait, but its damage contribution relies on having a reasonable amount of crit already on our gear (and depending on your gear level, crit may be our 3rd or even 4th most important stat).

Recommended build paths

Empowered Artifact Trait Paths

After completing your 35th trait, you can do a quest which will open up 5 new traits, and the ability to upgrade all of the 3 level traits to a 4th level. Survival Hunters will generally want to work their way up to the new Golden Trait before moving on to upgrading any of the old traits which are now able to upgrade to 4 ranks.